Cod Almighty | Diary

Good from far but far from good

12 March 2021

The path GTFC have taken over the past five years is depressing for any number of reasons. To take the most objective measure, the only silverware we have to show for it are our medals for finishing runner-up on the second page of the Ceefax table in 2016-17. All that tolerance of the mugs running the club wasn't even a means to an end.

We could go further. Embracing multiverse theory, science fiction and the help of a NASA supercomputer big enough to fill the town hall, Daubney Diary is confident that in the alternative realities sprouting from the infinite possibilities and decisions over the period, there isn't a single scenario where any of this worked out for Fenty FC. In fact, that was actually what we ended up being called in one of the scenarios. Like 1988, the council were backing the club but Europe's Food Town on our shirts was replaced by Brexit's Food Bank and the stripes were ditched in favour of mustard rollnecks. Errea was still making the kit of course, that was the same in all 75 million alternative realities.

So at the end of all this, what have we learned. All the embracing of conmen and charlatans through the door of BP, the hollow words about a "community club", the penny pinching and upsetting of players, managers, and fans was for nowt and never threatened to push that Icelandic puffin and Dave Wherry's Complete History of GTFC out of the trophy cabinet.

Almost every club, and certainly our own, fails much more more often than they succeed. Now we all like winning. No, we love winning. However we have to accept that success will probably be rare and fleeting and we can't let it define us or our club. Original/Regular Diary expressed this better than I ever could in a rather marvellous diary a few years ago

And bound up with the issue of who we are is the question of where we are. Where we are is a diminished outpost on the North Sea coast, overlooking a steely grey estuary where the tide goes out for miles. Just occasionally the pearly sea shimmers and dances in a low, opalescent dusk and the lavish Lincolnshire sky seems about to burst with burnish and dazzle, and your heart almost stops with the beauty of it all. But mostly there's the empty expanse of the tide-forsaken sandflats, an Arctic wind that bruises bone, and distant electric lights calling through the late afternoon darkness that envelops the water.

That's actually not a bad place. There are plenty of worse ones. Often it isn't a pretty place. But it's a place that informs who we are. The views and the cold around Blundell Park are a striking and unique sensory experience. More than that, though, they tell Grimsby's story: the past hard graft of our grandfathers, the present neglect of our governors. They are integral to Town's very distinctive identity. And that identity amounts to something greater than supporters at many of the more 'successful' clubs we see around us will ever know...

...And every time someone wins, someone loses. And your turn will always come. And if you lost your identity in becoming a winner, then when your turn comes to lose, you've got nothing left. Not even who you were.

There you go, told you it was better than I could muster. Bloody poets with their sideline in fancy prose. I'd have said something daft like when you lose and have to look at yourself in the mirror, do want to see Steve Evans or Bobby Robson looking back at you?

The challenge isn't just to elevate the club in the league standings but perhaps the much tougher feat of restoring its identity. It won't be easy, particularily as football itself has become a place detached from the community it should serve, partnered up with preying jackals like bookies and companies that give ponzi schemes a bad name. So, chop chop, soon to be new owners, add that to the list of stuff you get tagged with daily on social media.

Did someone mention league standings? I was hoping I could avoid that. We've Colchester in Cleethorpes tomorrow for a 5.30pm kick-off and we've reached that point in the proceedings where even a win won't lift us off the bottom. You can tell we've made progress recently though because last week we were able to blame the ref for the first time this season and on Tuesday, cats were kicked all over NE Lincs despite picking up an away point. It's felt like we've been cycling uphill and into the wind but perhaps, just perhaps, we're about to reach the summit and freewheel all the way to 22nd place. I realise careering downwards isn't the best analogy to end on but I've already ripped off one old diary and I don't have time to do another. Have a happy, point-filled weekend.

UTM.